Stripped
by Demyrie
Summary: When a battle on Mount Olympus leaves Blue Beetle and Booster Gold stranded in a gritty life-or-death situation, naked without their cherished technological edge... who is to say what makes a superhero a superhero? BoosterxBeetle friendship-intense. JL.


A/N: OH GEEZ.

This piece has been a long time in my head… A LONG time. It's kinda spiritual. Kinda. I love the theme of it, but it's a celebration of what Beetle and Booster are, really. The intensity of it is kinda slashy, and it pleases the timid Boostle shipper in me, but Beetle DOES moon over Diana a bit, so… as you do. MOSTLY het.

God above, I love these two. I DO I DO. Takes place at the reformation of the Justice League under Max… what is it, the SUPER BUDDIES ERA? XD Well, that.

Lawl.

(The force-field belt/flight ring mixup has been fixed! Hooray!)

-.-.-.-.-.-

Stripped

-.-.-.-.-.-.

**STRIP**. v. strips, stripping, stripped.

a. To remove all excess detail from; reduce to essentials.

b. To dismantle piece by piece.

c. To empty.

-.-.-.-.-

He should've expected it, he supposed.

They had always been different. They were the least conspicuous, and least naturally _gifted_ of their colleagues, able to hide in the real world and go to movies on Saturday night without the crutch of a hologram. Bank deposits and movies, however, weren't everything—even when it was Nicole Kidman onscreen. It took an exhausting amount of personal strength to span the gap that lay between those who had superpowers and those who did not; to be able to function with these superhumans on a normal level and not feel completely mundane.

Mundane, and uncomfortably useless.

Most of the time, that strength prevailed, and much ass was kicked by Blue Beetle, defender of women and science. But most of the time, these battles were fought in the world Ted was born to, or worlds that were fundamentally similar. Few of them had ever been waged in a plane that seriously handicapped any of them: now, they were bugs caught on a windshield, not to offend his entomology fixation or anything of the morbid sort. Given the epic circumstances, he should've expected to get buffeted aside by the typhoon of metahuman fury as the two sides clashed—but certainly not to _this_ extent. He would have understood 'tentative bystander' status, or the ruffled compulsion to make cheerleader jokes as he and Booster watched from behind a rock with their mouths shut and a plan ready.

What he got was two shattered limbs, something that felt suspiciously like a concussion and a best friend who lay an inestimable number of miles from death—which wouldn't have been such a problem if miles hadn't been located _straight down_.

He should've expected it from the very beginning.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was Wonder Woman's intimate territory, of course, but she wanted to handle it cleanly, so help was called in. The deal was almost usual for the reconstructed Justice League: an impressive gaggle of power-crazed scientists banding together on Mount Olympus to give top-notch technological life to age-old myths and setting them on the unwitting populace… but only if their demands were not met. It had stopped being impressive when someone concocted a Hitler-bot, and the League's patience had only gone downhill from there. So, thanks to a thousand gallons of fresh intellectual perspiration, the Titans were walking the earth again, ready to rise from Tartarus and trample a few olive trees and goats if a measly billion dollars weren't at the foot of Mount Olympus in the morning. Fire almost laughed: _just_ a billion. Mad scientists these days.

But Max figured helping Greece worm out of a mighty bill would have its rewards somewhere… if not in the mere presence of Diana. Ted agreed heartily. Heartily. So they'd suited up without another word and headed off to the Mediterranean.

There was nothing on TV anyways.

The craggy range surrounding Mount Olympus offered nothing short of scraping exposure to the elements, but an unfamiliar (albeit hologram-concealed) plateau seemed better than a cliff. The crew flew in their various ways and means, Fire toting Ralph, Booster complaining about Beetle's weight making his ring wheeze worryingly, and so forth. Sleek evil cameras followed shortly, popping out from the cliff sides to glare at them. The ragtag scientists, sequestered in their inner-mountain cubicles, wasted no time probing for danger: the sight of spandex alone was enough to warrant a full frontal assault these days. The re-envisioned Titans burst from all sides of the rock coliseum and made the earth shake as they hit, steam hissing from their tightly-knit electric innards.

No one noticed the brief static spasm in the air as the foremost Titan's single red lens whirred disconcertingly, honing in on them. No one noticed the sudden death of small white noise, or an electric nakedness actually meant to confound the government's technological attempts to diffuse the creations. Only two would notice that anything that ever ran on electricity or energy, or claimed to… had suddenly quieted.

In the meantime, the seven rock- and scale-layered death-bots flexed their mechanical muscles. A long spout of flame shot out from the one to the left.

"Oh boy," Ralph wheezed. His arms twitched like rolling eels.

A speaker switched on, coughing static.

"Goodbye, Justice League!"

With a synthetic car-crash of recorded human shrieks and lion roars, the Titans charged the colorful little action-figure saviors. Wonder Woman was the first to break rank, whipping into the white air and calling the rest to her; Marvel was next, smiling even as she crashed headlong into one of the things. Beatriz rolled up her gloves and fired up until her leggy silhouette was a vertical smear of green flame, but before she dove in, she glanced over her shoulder at the two men standing semi-dorkishly at the fringes of the scattering group.

"You can take care of yourselves, right?" She shouted over the burgeoning sounds of new battle.

Booster nodded toward Fire, half a grin on his masculine face.

"Depends: will you grace us with your mostly-naked presence if we say no?"

"No," she said briskly. "I'll just feel better, knowing most of the screams aren't yours."

Then she eyed them both, dwarf-star gaze lingering on Booster's gleaming feet and his gold ring.

"Booster. If you let Beetle get squished—" she began.

"I know, I know," the gilded hero sighed, hanging his head. "The bug jokes will never stop."

Even when Beetle jabbed his friend in the ribs, Fire just made a brief, conciliatory noise and flew off, leaving a puff of lime-green brimstone smell in their faces. The rest of the heroes were fully launched and battling to the death, and the air thickened with all shades and vibrations of power. Too soon for health's sake, Booster turned to his partner in crime and grinned, like they could expect a good time from this; Ted managed little more than a sticky grimace. After a second look at the blossoming… well, titanic conflict, however, Booster's boisterous nerve seemed to cave a bit. He scuffed the smooth rock.

After all, they didn't exactly have the best arsenal of weapons, and they came up to the smallest Titan's needle-sharp kneecap.

"Do we just… charge?" He asked slowly.

"If you want to go out like Custer," Ted grumbled dryly. Before Booster could loudly berate him for talking about desserts at a time like this, Beetle tapped his goggles (frowning when the electronic UV filter didn't kick in) and said:

"They're too much to take in a group, even with help. We'll have to pick out a straggler. Preferably a small, weak straggler vulnerable to the old one-two."

The thin mountain air flashed red and someone cried out. _Thump._

"And without laser-eyes. Please, no laser-eyes."

Beetle tapped and tapped again, but Booster grabbed his shoulder and pointed, exclaiming:

"Option two? Have the straggler do the picking."

Ted Kord suddenly realized that, even with the spirited defense the Titans maintained, Diana had already driven them halfway across the spacious plateau: he and Booster were as far away from the fighting as possible, standing dumbstruck on the exposed terrain. And considering the eager jaunt of the smaller scrub-coated Titan bowling towards them, sporting a grey, sharp grin, he probably thought he was going to have his way with two smaller, weaker stragglers without laser-eyes. But the critter wasn't betting on laser-_hands_, and that's where he would slip.

"Saves us the walk," Beetle muttered stiffly, eyebrows rising as the Titan's monstrous strides ate up the distance won by the rest of the League. He was starting to feel each seven-ton footfall in his not-as-young-as-they'd-been knees. He backed up. "Okay, you know that thing that Bea said about not letting me get squished? Now would be a great time. For that. Not to get squished. _Booster._"

Blue eyes wide, Booster shook with more than just the consuming tremors, blindly grabbing for Ted at waist-level and digging into his generous love-handles for traction. The scientist squawked. He would've done more, but the straggler titan let out another staggering roar and it was all he could do to find his own handholds.

"Do we know how high these critters can jump?" Booster demanded, hand fluttering at his trim waist and the force-field belt worked into the glossy fabric. Just in case. He adjusted power levels with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer while thumbing his precious flight ring, chin twitching up to steal glances at the plowing Titan.

_BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM_--

"Booster! If you don't get us airborne, the only thing we'll have to worry about is how hard it lands! We sure as hell can't outrun it, so move!"

The two men jerked together—Michael's arms bundled around Ted, close and quick and unquestioned—and with the Titan still a healthy five hundred yards away, Booster tensed, grimaced and looked up because they were home free … and activated his ring.

Earth-shattering footsteps pounding in his ears, Ted felt like the entire world had been yanked out from beneath his flat feet—for the simple fact that it was still there, hard and quivering. They were still on the ground. He flinched, grabbing at Michael. Booster coughed up a vague, anxious sound and punched the sky again, straining invisibly onto the balls of his feet. Up.

_Up_.

They stood there, dull and heavy and stunned, one arm raised stupidly into the air. It just hadn't _worked_. Booster gasped in something like caving anguish, and took one step back. His arm went slack across Ted's waist.

They weren't airborne. It hadn't worked. The ground shook.

"You're kidding—"

"You might be, but Tiny's not!" Ted snapped, and shoved his friend in the back to get him going. The multi-ton Titan was at one hundred-fifty yards and closing. Everyone was out of earshot, or fighting for their lives. J'onn was in Africa.

They started running. Slow, stupid and human, they ran as fast as they could.

When the clarion call came, Ted didn't think about it: gods didn't fall into the realm of science. Booster, being an atheist from the future, thought it a fun romp led by a woman who made Ted do the _funniest_ things—and he needed an excuse to pick on his best friend and give him that look that said '_Well, Mister Maturity_—' and leave Ted to imagine the rest of what the look said. Neither, however, suspected that the goldenly synthetic, vibrating stuff of Mount Olympus' insane scientists would strip them of the things that made them stick.

To air, to the clouds in a bug, and to their 'superpowers'.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The wind didn't rustle or whistle up this high. There was nothing to grate against, nothing to push around: everything that had the slightest degree of budgeableness had been swept off of the cliffs eons ago. Aside from the chewed-fingernail ridges that made up the cliff tops, the wind had eroded the dry world until it was almost smooth.

Ted Kord's burning abdomen flinched atop the rock slope, searching for purchase. It was a good fifty-degree slope, he reasoned in a squeezed thought as an earnest twitch sent messy, bone-deep agony ripping up his leg. Fifty degrees and so arid, he even wondered how the tree above him had managed to take root… or absorb the fortitude needed to support the free-hanging weight of two fully grown men from a single broken leg angled in the crevice of its wiry split trunk.

He really wondered.

In the chaos of the fall—after the primal shock of being hefted up like organ-filled beanbags and flung into the gasping frictionless sky by a synthetic, wire-fed monster the size of the Chrysler building—Ted also marveled at how quickly they had snapped to. How they managed to rouse themselves midair, or reach for the grey scrub when they hit glossy, bone-breaking rock, was a feat only attributed to their gruesome and treacherous superhero training, but it managed to get them… this.

Whatever this was.

Ted took a deep breath, flickering yellow vision stuck on the thick yellower fingers clamped around his numb wrist. The flight ring sat on his second-to-last finger, gleaming in front of Michael's bloody knuckles.

"Is your ring working yet?" He asked the hand.

"No."

The wind didn't whistle, but it seemed to roar after a while. Or maybe that was just the liquid pain crystallizing in his ears, stiffening in the cold mountain air.

Ted had already slipped out of consciousness once. When they first fell, Booster's manic grip on his wrist was the only thing that kept the two together, since Ted couldn't function past the airless black fog dribbling out of his ears and the _pieces_ moving around in his body—but when his friend jerked, turning Ted's twisted leg into a broken toothpick, Ted woke up. Woke up and screamed, but woke up nonetheless.

His new grappling hook was gone. Clattered away somewhere.

"How about now?"

"_No_, Beetle," Booster answered from somewhere below him, voice hardening.

The Bug was nearby. He was told to leave it at the base of the range to avoid premature detection, so he tucked it in between two formidable rocks. Ted had already called it twenty-seven times, jamming at his beacon with his battered left elbow (before it slid down and went sailing into nothingness, breath-holding nothingness). Apparently the Bug just didn't feel like coming to visit.

Ted could sympathize.

"…How about—"

"If you can't find it in yourself to wait for its _spontaneous healing_, come down here and fix it yourself, handyman! _Oh wait_. That won't matter, because none of our stuff _works_ anymore, thanks to the magical power of Olympus! So now I'm just wearing a fashionable accessory, complete with the amazing power of _shininess_. Green Lanterns got nothing on me! Envy of the fucking superhero _world_."

Ted smiled despite himself. Automatic and dry, his mouth twitched, because Michael's squirming rage didn't quite hit home when his bleached brain was still smoldering.

"… If you still want my bling, you can _have_ it," Booster hissed.

"No thanks," Beetle sighed thickly. "I'll content myself with your scintillating wit."

There was one downside to shock. Eventually, it wore off, and the real pain started in tooth-baring earnest.

Ted groaned softly and set his scraped cheek on the cold rock. Waiting.

-.-.-.-

At first, he was all about where he'd come from.

'The Future' this, 'The Future' that—he pulled the metaphorical wool cowl over Ted's eyes many a time in the beginning, eager as the scientist was to learn of the utopian Mecca awaiting his backwards 21st century people. Booster supplied stories and facts aplenty. Beer came in tablets. Babies came in tubes. Robots fixed your hair in the morning and sickness was a thing of the past. (Maybe it was a little Freudian to say so, knowing Booster's history: he probably wished such a thing were true more than Ted ever would. He was probably wishing alongside his star-stuck future friend, spinning tales a bit too long to reel in).

Most of all, Booster _loved_ to impress. And Ted, at first, was very impressed, and asked many, many questions. Then there was a cold, flat span where Ted had caught him in two or three lies—enough to where his scientist mind kicked in and made Booster into an unflattering 'dissembling' percentile—and dismissed the golden Adonis as an attention-whoring puppy with a mad, suited meddler pulling his strings. His casual smiles condensed into twitches.

Of course, not even one as dense as Booster could miss the sudden switch in attitude. He sulked, at first, wandering the HQ in search of a new acquaintance—all he could win, being moderately unwanted as he was—and casually plying the other League members with stories that just didn't light them up like they did the Blue Beetle. He acted indifferent, but the security cameras caught him passing the lab three times in an hour: and nobody could forget where the kitchen was that fast. Ted figured the new kid would try his handsome trade on everyone else and charge on into the world, vaingloriously set in his ways until he crashed and burned: but it was not so.

Rule of life said that, while people can change, they never change _enough._ If Ted had expected a full reform into an orphan-kissing, selfless angel, he would have been sorely disappointed, but seeing thick Booster make an effort to _learn_ was the first tip-off that he could be getting himself into a life-long relationship. The sports-star cooled down and bit his tongue; reached out to Ted the way normal people do, instead of inviting worship. They went drinking, and Booster was just as vulnerable as everyone else with a pint or two in his futuristic, well-greased system: Ted found it highly therapeutic to laugh at the doused pretty-boy, and somehow Booster always smiled and laughed back, never dodging the other hero's predatory smirk-beam. He took it, and seemed glad for the small embarrassment, reveling in the mundane attention. The rapport.

Somewhere in him, an encouraging goodwill and decency lurked. Earthly weakness he had aplenty, and many a time cut a killing path through his friends and allies to feed his egocentric wants, but it was too late for Ted to regret the man. He changed after settling in with the League. Enough of the bull-headed, genetically advanced youth with the perfect teeth and pitiful reaction time remained that… well, the transformation wasn't unearthly. It was just pleasing.

Resisted in full, stubbornly won and horrifically overdue… but still pleasing.

He had to admit, Justice League had never been so… domestic with Batman around. Or rather, more like home: sure, it had felt like a house, but he was the nerdy middle brother trying not to get on Uncle Bats' last nerve. Then Booster came into the picture, and, to the woe of the world, baited Ted's mischievous side into the open. They were brothers, they were pranksters in arms, a _set_. Offense and Defense. Blue and Gold.

Ted had always been set apart, but now with Booster in his un-metahuman bubble, the distance became a warm, stealthy shield that he could use to execute any one of a hundred pranks—then deflect accusing stares. They stuck together like glue; or like that odd concoction in Ted's lab that Booster had seen fit to test on a single choco, which was then fused onto the kitchen counter to await J'onns hilarious frustrations (unfortunately, Guy got there first, and apparently really wanted a cookie. The kitchen had to be remodeled).

It was… golden. Being superheroes was secondary to fooling around, and they loved each other dearly for years and years, through leather corporation jackets and weight gain and name-calling.

They had their disagreements when the old Justice League had shuffled back together, fidgeting and smiling with Max's warm, businessman hands in the small of their backs. It was a happy time, but it was shadowed by the golden time, and they sat, spitting gold dust and chuckling like they weren't bothered by it. And they—the whole group of them, new faces and old friends--tried again.

There was a lot to process. Ted and KORD industries: finally. Booster and Gladys, sweet Lord. Fire and her _website_. No one supposed Atom could have changed much, as he didn't have that awkward, chameleon link with the real world the rest of them had to maintain.

Ted and Booster most especially were at odds. It was all about maturity.

They bickered. Had a screaming fit in public. Came close to fist-fighting and almost sparked an intergalactic war. It was the usual fare in the life of Blue and Gold, as powerful at odds as they were in sync, but once they sat down on the old couch to watch an old movie, years of crusty separation dissolved and Ted's heart seemed to beat a little surer. That was what had made him scream, he knew now: grabbing at his lopsided life, squeezing every last drop out of what could be his last debt-riddled day using the barbed vice of 'maturity'. It hurt, to be so even-handed and controlled: to watch out for the organic time-bomb in his very adult chest. Booster was ridiculous and offensive, but he still had a flow that Ted could do nothing but envy even as his lip curled.

Back on the couch, the vice loosened and the blood rushed back to his quiet heart. Ted stopped trying to be a grownup most of the time, and Booster knew his banter-filled playmate was back, imaginary health condition or no. The next prank happened a scant hour after the credits rolled, popcorn abandoned on the table, but Ralph could do nothing but smile, hearing Ted's throaty snicker under Booster's manic belly laugh.

Not much had changed, really. They were still best friends: still one another's first and last resort both in battle and on Friday nights. Most importantly, they could tell each other the truth. Whether the other wanted to listen or not was an entirely different matter, but Ted and Michael never did cushion blows—or cheapen good, true words.

-.-.-.-

Neither had spoken. It seemed a little less real, if they kept quiet. Then Booster said his name.

"Ted."

"Beetle," Ted grunted, superhero habit flinching out of his scorched system: the single syllable unnerved him more than the red strain in his broken leg. The blurry shock had worn off, and pain had begun etching hot red lines down every vein. If help was going to arrive, it had to arrive _soon_.

Booster nursed a second of anxious silence.

"Beetle," he said slowly. Unsure, but sure: shaken by the wind and the mile of washed-out blue beneath him. "If it comes down to it—"

"No. Nothing's coming 'down'," Ted cut in waspishly. He cleared his throat and tried to tighten his fingers, only to find he couldn't feel them any more. "Don't say that word."

"If you're going to fall with me, you're—"

"_No_."

Ted closed his eyes. His entire self throbbed, an alarming pressure building in his wrist. Once or twice he even imagined he heard the tree—their god-sent anchor—creak, and coughed out a terrified noise that Booster didn't ask after. The tree held, but his heart was sore. He couldn't deal with this. Not now, together with this cockeyed martyr act Booster was pulling.

"…You have to let go."

"_Man_," he groaned, fighting off the buzzing, grinding sensation with more words, pushed one-by-one over his grit teeth to join Booster over the cliff. "Who are you and where's my partner? Booster Gold: you've seen him? He's a really—no, wait, he's not really a human, he's more like a big ball of _ego_, and while he's gloriously dumb, he'd never consent to being tossed off a _cliff_—so hey, if you see him around, can you tell him to give me a hand? Or a leg. I'm a little short on either right now. Nothing pressing, though."

"You have to let go," Booster persisted, tremble clear and high in his voice. Fear. That cut Beetle to the quick, and he muttered vehemently:

"Shut up."

"Not _now_—don't you dare let go right now, not while you can still—I mean, I _like_ me--but—" Booster jabbered, and Ted almost relaxed at the lukewarm influx of ego. Then he stilled again, breath coming shallow and anxious. Ted couldn't see his best friend's face, but he could imagine it.

"I mean it."

"It's a thousand-something foot _drop_, Booster! We're on the edge of fucking _Mount Olympus_!" Ted exploded, swallowing the purple, swollen pain as his ruined leg twitched around the tree. Bone shards shifted, pricking and god if he wasn't going to get infected from this. He jammed his tired teeth together. "I'm not going to walk away from this."

"You wouldn't be walking—you'd be crawling!" The other hero snapped, and it was an incredible effort to yell so loudly without moving, to not even twist his bloody shoulders. "And you think the drop is gonna be any better with you screaming after me!? You'll weigh me down, Ted!"

"_No_."

It was all he could say, but it was met with a breathless, preoccupied pause: a sudden spark or change in Booster. Beetle could feel it past the dense rock between them. Then he started talking, and Ted saw.

"I'm serious. You'd weigh me down, Ted. I'd hit twice as hard, because of your _girth_. Because hey—those Lean Cuisines? Aren't working. You're fat. Man, are you fat. Fatty McFatass. Watch out, Burger Barn, here comes the Fatinator."

Ted puffed gutterally, eyes shut. Suddenly, Booster had doubled in weight and his wrist twisted with a hot internal pressure. His muscles were… beyond words. Overextended, red and laced with acid. His carpal-tunnelled hand was crumpling in Booster's grip.

Booster waited. Probing.

"_Total_ fatness."

"Are you trying to _piss me off_ so badly that I won't feel bad about _dropping_ you?" Ted spat out, glaring off down the cliff where his shameless friend hung.

"Hate to be so transparent, but yeah. That's pretty much what I was going for," Booster muttered, spark doused.

Beetle grimaced. Now the talking was distracting him. Casual, rhythmic syllables were better than inflamed synapses and bleeding limbs. God, how long had they been like this? Half an hour? He couldn't lift half Booster's weight for ten minutes in a gym!

"It's not working. Try insulting my mother," Ted squeezed out.

"Oh, I wouldn't know where to start," Booster scoffed. "I'm from the _future_, y'know: we're all born from _tubes_."

It hit him harder than the fall; it hit him harder than the cold ring or the dead belt around Booster's waist, or the snap of his leg, because it was so classically, goldenly Michael. Artistically lame, sharp and stupid. He laughed with all of the paralyzed insides of him. It ripped out like a bark, then broke into an agonizing stutter as his body pulsed back, punishing him for shaking.

"_G-god_, Booster, you never know when to _shut up_!" He hissed.

"Even when my life hangs in the balance?"

"_Especially_."

The world shook.

Something fleshy failed inside Ted and somehow an inch surfaced where there was none to be had. His grizzled tendons gave it to the chasm beyond the cliff, and Booster yelled out as his blue-gloved anchor jerked. Micheal gasped in midair and he felt the same tense breath drawn from above him, beneath him. It seemed to shake the hard, angled world and make him realize he had nothing but air around him. Just a giant, frozen gasp.

Ted strained and strained and strained.

"Maybe that's what makes me so charming," he whispered after ten seconds—ten solid seconds—had passed and he was still hanging and he had to say something or else his chest would burst.

"Not from where I'm splayed," Ted managed, and said nothing more.

Booster shut the hungry sky out and limited his world to the pull of Ted's grip on his one good hand. The other arm hung at his side, numb, crunched and heavy. He'd tried using it, sure: if he had both of his arms, he would have vaulted the cliff side ages—an hour?—ago. But as it was wired in soundly to a broken collarbone, a twist of his swollen torso made his eyes dim with pain-sparks. Losing consciousness wasn't the best option at this point, even if it'd make landing a bit easier.

Ted's left arm was not quite right either, but it was still twisted underneath Booster's, fingers faintly curved toward his wrist. It was a good effort. Good effort from a good friend.

Best effort from a best friend.

"It doesn't do a bit of good to lose both of us."

"Would you quit talking like that?" Beetle growled. "No—rephrase that, would you just quit _talking_? I'm_ not gonna lose you_."

"Well, I wouldn't think you'd _lose_ me—you'd know exactly where I _was_, just not in how many _pieces_--"

"_Shut up, _Booster! _Your morbid technicalities are not appreciated right now!_"

His sore, dented heart throbbed in his ears and his throat and his eyes burned.

"Okay," Booster said softly.

And he had wondered before then how Booster could be so brave. Or maybe he wasn't brave, he was just stupid: Ted could've written a college dissertation on that novel little notion. But then again, maybe he was just _human_… but his wires were short-circuiting so he appeared like the superheroes so many miles away from them. Invincible.

Then Booster breathed in, and Ted knew he was scared. Horribly, quietly scared. Ted choked. They were on the cliff—they had _always_ been on the cliff, nothing had changed except for a menacing, creaking rise in agony—but now the world underneath them had become _real_. The ground expanded below them, cloud-studded hours away, detailed and hard.

Booster could fall. All trim two-hundred human pounds of him. His ring would not spark, would not scoop him up in the void; his belt would not shimmer. He could fall, and keep falling and gaining speed until he hit.

And if he fell, he wouldn't skip out on morning meetings. He wouldn't whistle 'Tequila' as he walked past Ted's door three and four and five times, he wouldn't drag Ted out of the house or the lab, and he certainly wouldn't be in his special chair in the corner with the remote already covetously tucked underneath the cushion so Ted would know to go right for his ribs, to cut to the chase in order to get to the remote and get to channel 34 in time for Modern Marvels.

The cliff, already impossible, became higher. The ground got farther away. The air in-between loomed.

Ted closed his eyes.

"Just… hang on, man. Hang on."

Booster's hand tightened momentarily on his. Ted almost felt it.

"Sure. Sure," he whispered over the clean, dry wind.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Friends.

What were friends?

Creatures of opportunity. Networking machines. Finely wired ego-slaves, so well tuned they resounded with whatever he was feeling at the time. True, in the last of his High Education years he'd had some people who liked him, but only rarely there was no alternative motive. Now, he'd just learned to accept it, knowing that handsomeness or talent was a fair price for _this_. It was his to give, anyways. The best time to sell personal attributes is when they're calling a high price, and as long as the world hungered for something young and beautiful and striking, the price was always high.

It was so heady because he felt nothing but _himself_—everyone around him was most interested in him. There was an endless feedback of yellow singing energy, of nothing _but_ him. He swam in himself, felt his light magnified a thousand times by these bright, mirroring faces, by the glow of them beyond the cataract of the stage light as he bent over the microphone to accept another award. Another. Another.

He thought these people were nothing like him. Partiers, moochers with open hands that he filled with a laugh. Peeling, dry, ready to cave.

Or maybe… more like him than he'd like to admit. He was just fortified with fame. It was a saccharine preservative. Kept him gleaming, even as he drank all night and approached mahogany desks with plaintive smiles and… let his fingers fall loose as the ball whizzed through. He was unconcerned with the similarities, drawn instead to the things that made them different… and kept _them_ coming.

They were limitless. The people. The awards. The moments. Another, another, another: they kept coming, like little spasms of cheap deja vu. Emotional re-runs that he watched on TV just to see it again. There could only _be_ so many because they meant so little, and he could see himself in all of them: the gleam of his tooth in a plaque; the adoration of the faceless crowd, united only by a love for him; the shine in any team member's face as it thrummed with that well-meaning jealousy, that worshipping avarice. The entire world was a shrine, and he never had to deal with anyone but himself.

(Which proved harder than one would think, sometimes, when his mother was coughing in the cold bedroom and his sneering father had slammed the door ten minutes earlier and Michael Jonas Carter felt ready to vomit under the weight of all that green need, but then the next game came and he forgot all about _himself_ and turned instead to worship this man who seemed to have all the answers, even if they were just the right answers for the right reporters. The ability to _do right_ in whatever hideously shallow, golden sense was priceless.)

Him. Him. Him.

Michelle was there. Tried to talk him out of it, when he got in deeper. Too deep. Touched his arm where Dad had grabbed him, where he'd said "Don't let them hurt me again" with the sticky swollen finger of scar-tissue across his eye. His son was nothing more than a marketable item, transactions unaffected by enduring parental softness. Jonas' hand was always hard on his neck, and Gold Star bowed. Michelle—his sister and other half--cared enough to say that their father would never love him.

He threw the game anyways, knowing that it would end somehow, and an end was what he really wanted.

People, both faceless and familiar, peeled away from him after he was caught and labeled moral flotsam. Tossed aside, then shoved further into the dark hours of a janitorial service. _He_ had been gone since Michael was born. She was gone, now too. He left her, she came to find him, and even after that she was taken away.

Now, after making the leap into another time and losing his twin all over again, there was only one for him. His _best_ friend.

It was so different to find someone. One. To find something _else_ reflected back at you: a person who wouldn't take your shit. Of course, there was a lot of that upon arriving at Justice League for the first time. In fact, there was an immovable decision not to take his shit. He didn't know what to do, at first, so he kept shoveling it. It was the only way he knew how to _operate_. If the 21st century operated on Windows, he came barging in a gleaming, polished Mac, and was repeatedly kicked in the face: and, being a Mac, was not altogether _used_ to being flexible… or insulted. He felt it. Hard.

He burst into the 21st century not a new person but an upgraded person, wiped clean of that one bad toss. Now that he could fly, he could catch anything he needed to. He still believed _it_ was not his fault, and these new faces had nothing to fault him for, but that didn't change the fact he was instantly labeled a second stringer in a tightly-knit nugget of superheroes, all of which he'd polished with a dirty rag. Not exactly wanted. Maybe they sensed he wasn't supposed to be there, parting time with his golden stolen foot, but they weren't ready to welcome him with open arms.

He tried to impress the ordinary Mr. Kord (every so often, at his convenience) when he first arrived. Then he tried in earnest, once he saw what the prize was for widening the eyes of this cantankerous, sardonic, weight-worried scientist: interest. Interest on a personal, individual level. And maybe an invitation to go drinking—with just him.

Not with crowds. Just him.

Ted was the only one who not only put up with him, but thought to help him _reprogram_. He was the one who put a little bit of himself into Booster. Held his hand, so to speak. Let him practice being a real person, until he could deceive any John (or J'onn) or Barbie out there that he spoke real HTML code. It worked. Maybe.

Not really.

He was still flawed. He still preferred his Mac ways, and he made no secret of it. He was a walking vessel of The Sexually Ambivalent Future, firing presumptuous, jargon-riddled suggestions at beautiful women and sly men; staring bemusedly at the chasms in the living room couch between Guy, Ralph and Ted. And Ted loved him despite the fact he wasn't a _real person_. Despite the fact that he always lived down to expectations. Ted still stuck with him, making one shoe-scuffing second-stringer into a presentable set of two, because… just because. Regardless.

All Michael knew was that no one had ever done that before.

By simple, unwavering friendship, Ted Kord made him who he was.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He should have let go an hour ago.

He was dehydrated, broken and his hand had petrified. Every so often, the mangled lump in his chest jumped and shuddered.

Ted was having trouble breathing.

"Booster, I—"

"I know," he answered, quick and hurt. Ted shouldn't be talking. He could hear the cracks it left in the other hero. "I…yeah."

His own body was failing.

"I'm not gonna let you fall," Ted slurred after a long moment, voice and eyelids quivering.

"I… know that too." Booster made a soft snorting noise. "Man, you're stupid."

"Hey," Ted puffed faintly, almost wry. "You can't say that. Only I can say that. To you."

He gathered his odd words and blinked the acidic sweat out of his eyes.

"And I'm not stupid."

"Can't I lie to make myself feel better?" Booster murmured.

"And here I thought a life-or-death situation would _change_ you…"

The simple words ushered in a grim silence, flickering and pale.

"Ted—"

Booster's voice broke. He couldn't finish.

Beetle wanted to scream. He wanted to feel his scraped belly strain against that hard stone—but he felt like that would make this suffocating white reality flinch, and send Booster jerking an inch down his fingers. An inch, then an eternity.

And then he started thinking, in wounded fits and bursts. His consciousness' death-knell sounded, bringing bitter reality to the back of his throat. He sputtered. Choked.

"God, if I were a superhero—if I were something more than just a guy in long johns who doesn't want people to know what he gets up to at night—"

He felt tears welling, to know how easily—with such absent, calm goodwill--Superman could heave them up, lift them away from sore bodies and fear, the _fear_, and this piece-meal, second-by-second struggle. The thought made him sick. Superpeople. Impossible people. _Gods_. Metahumans: deus ex machinas roving the limited earth, unknowing of these tedious little conditions that plagued _humans_. Gravity. Tall, solid cliffs. Any disastrous combination of the two. Above it. Beyond it. Impossible.

Deus ex machinas. Greek drama term. Inflated plot-devices, coming in at the last moment against all odds and _fixing everything_. He'd worked with them, trusted them: almost come to think them ordinary, in their own eccentric, plasma-powered ways. Now, when he needed one most—

"Ted. C'mon," Booster pleaded huskily and it had nothing to do with death or fear but with his crumpling best friend and the raw sounds he was making. "Ted."

"_Beetle_," he choked dumbly.

God, he had never felt so _dirty_, _useless_ and _human_.

Superman could cut the strings, eliminate this heartache in seconds. But here, he strained. Tried not to cry. God, he hurt. Hurt to be so weak. His poor body throbbed, so prone to error. Poor, insufficient body, housing a deluded brain that made him think—by immersion and time with these superbeings, and proof in numbers of times he'd saved the world—the _world_, a parceled, diminutive term that most humans never got to _realize_, let alone save!—that he was a small god.

God enough to save his best friend from dying.

Supernatural enough to defy that mundane thing called gravity, even as it sucked at Micheal's boots, as it ripped his hand apart. Threatened to wind inside his heart and inflate and contract and pop it like a wet berry and make him drop dead and make him _drop Booster_.

Ted moaned so quietly he could hardly hear himself.

He—the failed legacy hero, the scarabless Blue Beetle--had worked with them for _so long_, and now when he needed one most—there was nothing. Nothing but bodies and the two souls they held, dangling by a sinew. Regardless of their super-metahuman, laser-shooting, mind reading bedfellows… for all the universe cared, they could have been any two humans in history, about to die. Struggling. Afraid. So vulnerable. Alive for so short a time: hurting just to prolong it, and _be_ with one another.

There was just body, mind, and soul, and losses to be had. So many losses.

So when Booster twisted like a fish on a line, Ted cursed him and Booster--human, neurotic, terrified Booster who didn't quite know what he was doing but knew that he _cared_ like only the luckiest humans ever would (Booster was lucky to care—lucky to have what he had, almost lose his love in an argument after he'd made so many mistakes)-- screamed back. He yanked somehow to free himself and kill himself, because the man holding onto him was supposed to let go: but the air and gravity and every single mortal thing claimed him in a swirl of sickening white and Ted Kord struggled and roared but did not let go.

The tree snapped.

They fell. Plummeted. Stomachs strained and gagged themselves inside out as the air punched through their bodies somehow and the pressure pulverized organs—they screamed into the empty death. They were human when they fell and they would be human when they hit, and all of their blood and pieces would be human and they would never have been anything but pretenders—

Ted hit, and screamed and was dead.

But the order of all of it was odd.

It was somehow difficult to believe that he was dead, without having died: the blackness in his eyes was difficult and thick, but not too convincing. His leg was in bleeding agony, and he didn't think dead people cared about the state of their legs. He wasn't flat: he was curled. Bundled into something that left two cold spots on his legs and back with his rear hanging out.

He realized that he hadn't let go of Booster's wrist and he hurt very badly, and that someone was chuckling.

He opened his eyes and his throat at the same time, and it was like the horrible pressure in his organs had been released.

"What—Diana?!"

The beautiful Amazonian known as Wonder Woman gleamed in his wet eyes, alabaster arms cradled around him. They were flying. He flinched as Booster's weight suddenly dropped from his hand, and he gasped out and looked down, but Micheal, limp and blood-smeared, rose like a wandering gold and blue balloon, Fire holding him tightly. Ted stared and laughed, then choked; the wind rushing along his patchily exposed skin sent shivers of delayed terror through him, mind sparkling and flinching with the pure _impossibility_--

"Oh—god, oh—"

"Gods." She smiled.

His eyes rolled upwards and his battered consciousness flickered, fuzzy and dark because his body was _done_, but he puffed and gasped and beat it away.

"We were _dead_."

"Don't you know—the Greeks invented deus ex machina?" Diana said with a clean smile that knew nothing of organic, messy, human pain (because it had all been sealed underneath snow-white metahuman scar tissue: every superhero had their tragedy but somehow they coped cleaner). And he was there, in her arms, still living. He had been saved at the last possible moment, after his mortal strength had failed him, against all odds… Why?

Because he had been paired with these people for a _reason_, even human as he was. He was exceptional. He needed to survive.

So did Booster.

Booster, of course, had passed out. It would have been so easy to follow suit, but he was utterly awake and thrumming with the miracle and the _ache_. But that was fine, because not even a mortally terrified, agony-riddled shell of a man could refuse a moment alone in Ms. Diana's arms, even with a shattered leg that didn't appreciate her new grip on him. Call him shallow? Never. There was a scientific logic behind it all: hormones didn't become sterile just because of a brush with high-speed death. In fact, in a strange way, with this instant realization of one's mortality, it almost made the urge to reproduce and carry on one's lineage unbearable. Of course, he didn't tell any certain Amazonian deity such a thing.

That would've been scientifically awkward.

"Are you two alright?" She asked him softly. When the Blue Beetle only groaned and twitched, she bit her lip. "How in Athena's name did you get like that?"

Ted looked down. She wouldn't have known. Of course. But the reasons didn't matter anymore: the way some tech-neutralizing scheme had left them facing death with nothing but what they were born with and utterly destroyed the reasons they called themselves heroes … well. It just made them find another reason. The better reason.

Willpower. Duty. Limitations. Love.

The ground was still there, but clouds were quickly glossing it over, creating a glass barrier. Ted couldn't fall now, when he was back in the arms of invincibility and laughable improbability. It didn't matter anymore; they were heroes again. Not quite superheroes, and not quite human… but certainly back where they belonged.

Ted suddenly shifted again, peering down. Booster's lion head sat heavily in the crook of Bea's neck, body twisted. She looked at the team clown, then up at Beetle, beauty dented by a sharp, silent worry. Michael. Alive. And drooling. Ted grinned so hard his lips cracked and his quieted heart pulsed. He'd hug the bastard later. Before or after he punched him in the face. These things would sort themselves out in time.

And time it took, getting the two cracked men into the infirmary and setting broken limbs. The final count came to one concussion, continent-sized black bruises and merciless abrasions and seven broken bones. Head Quarters was unbearably quiet with the two wrapped in hospital gowns and confined to the health ward; Max kept stopping in his tracks and peering around, as though he found himself in the calm before a storm and expected the walls themselves to cave. In fact, the quiet was so similar to a certain concealing, naive silence--usually prelude to one of Booster and Beetle's prodigal pranks--that the entire League was on edge until they were released and in sight during daylight hours. Altogether it took close to two months, along with some heavy-handed magical assistance, to get the two heroes back on their feet and running training courses side by side. Two months of battered hospital-bed chuckles and finger-touches and old jokes and radiant, sure smiles.

The nickname "Cliff-Diver", however, did not leave for many months more. Every time Booster went out, Ted made sure to leave a bungee cord by the door.

Every time he went out, Booster never failed to smile and think briefly about that idea called God. God, who had apparently conjured up the earth, humans, cliffs, and gravity, and even mad scientists with Grecian penchants… but who had also made Ted Kord. For all the slights incurred by the previous dull-witted inventions, Michael simply couldn't find anything _too_ wrong with a primitive, inflated power-idea that had a hand in making his best friend. He wouldn't start going to church anytime soon, that was for sure, but the unforgiving lacquer painted over his imagination by a lifetime of atheism became a bit thinner.

Somehow, the idea of someone up there, looking out for two pathetic, incredible humans, standing on their last leg between them… didn't seem so bad.


End file.
